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I know for some of you, it may be of no importance or some may say, why talk about Nintendo, that thing doesn’t even sell in India, or some may say that, Nintendo’s games aren’t that much appealing.

Well, I used to think the same a few months back; until I followed the video games industry more closely, than I ever did.

I’ve never been more excited for a Nintendo console in a decade until now. Since mid-2015, we’ve been hearing Nintendo working on rumored hybrid console, code named the NX. And for over a year until the Switch reveal trailer in 2016, we’ve been getting many rumors, more than 90% of which have been accurate, when we saw the trailer & that yesterday we got to see the Nintendo Switch presentation.

Now before jumping to the presentation & what I as fan took from it, let me discuss in a brief, what Nintendo means to me personally as a gamer despite it not being supported in the country and I’ve never owned a piece of Nintendo hardware ever. Nintendo made the world realize, the importance of video games, they taught us what value do video games carry, hell they placed the “what we call a video game console” in almost every home all over the globe. The NES & SNES, although were not in the first in the market but were the “trend setters” in the gaming industries.

Nintendo has always aimed going out of the box doing something innovative and were still successful in making them fun simultaneously the best example is Nintendo Wii, it outsold PS3 and Xbox 360 not only in numbers but in fandom too. People who literally never played games also started calling themselves gamers. It was innovative with motion controls and despite of That was the cheapest selling 7th generation console and was most importantly fun too. I’m not at all trying to portray that Xbox 360 or PS 3 were somewhat less valuable than compared to the Wii. My point is that Nintendo has always been different innovative and that has been there USP, but I fear that now “different/innovative” things are being implemented just for the sake of it. Now personally for me and I believe for all the other Indian gamers of the 90’s generation out there Nintendo despite of not supporting the hardware at all in the country passively managed to kindle the feeling what we call “LOVE” to-wards video games.

It was my maternal aunt (Maassi we call in India) who gifted me alongside my cousins a cartridge based keyboard styled (NES/SNES) clone machine which ran many games combine on a single cartridge, having games of both the consoles. I’ve great memories of me playing enormous amount of video games ( like Super Bros, Duck Hunt, Mega man, Tetris, Batman, Legend of Zelda, Pac-man, Metal Gear solid, Excite Bike, Final Fantasy, etc) through my childhood until I had a computer at my home in 2004. So I’ve been playing these Nintendo games since I was 2.5-3 years old for over a decade and that made me who I am today which is 70% of body is made of video games and not water.

I’m very thankful to my supportive mother who literally taught me how to play video games and hence we played local multiplayer day in day out. So this is the Nintendo we all loved and all wanted to have that experience back. Since the launch of WiiU Nintendo has been on a rough track so much so that Nintendo hardware division realized heavily on the upcoming Switch console up to the extend that if the Switch fails due to any reason, it won’t be surprising for them to shut down the the hardware division.

It is necessarily vital for Nintendo to have a good start with the system at least a late but healthy growth until the end of the Switch cycle. I was so much hyped and excited for the Switch Specially since the Switch reveal the trailer a few months back, until finally watching the presentation. Now before going further I just want to make it clear that in no way I’m criticizing the system or even doubting the capabilities of the system rather it seems way to promising what my complain is that I don’t get what is going in Nintendo they fell and sound confident, in nut shell Nintendo is not been Nintendo anymore.

I had last exam of the semester at very same time the presentation was been streamed live that I only know how I gave my exam(tough one though!). Well, I finally saw the presentation which was almost an hour long of left me disappointed. The presentation the full of gimmicks not many games shown, poor 3rd party support, too much stupid yet overwhelming decisions, over priced accessories it felt at least to me that the games are not ready yet and Nintendo is making things rush.

Now again I’m not saying that the system is already a flop, hell it would be illogical to even think of it, it wasn’t the even the worst launch in history, look at Xbox One launch, the type of which no company ever wants to have but still the console managed to sell in a good proportion and is still selling in a good amount, what I’m saying is this is probably the last chance for Nintendo to at least have its name among the top consoles of the generation or to be in the race and it worries me that the very first step is full of doubts.

So from here on, I’m going to express my views on the whole presentation and what I personally took from it.

First of all, Nintendo still hasn’t learn how to demonstrate a major consumer hardware in a way that people could take something of the importance rather than the gimmicks displayed by Nintendo Officials. Then coming to the Launch Line-up of the Switch which Probably is not exciting at all, but for Legend of Zelda, Breadth of the Wild, I mean look at 1-2 Switch, it’s a demo disc experience, that is being charged the premium Price. And Nintendo was the only console left I’m the industry, which until now didn’t charge for the online services, which is also chargeable now and how can a machine in 2017 not support a chatting app natively, I just don’t get it, I mean the online service charge let’s us chat to the friends via smartphones, I’m afraid to say Nintendo is repeating the WiiU all over again, it’ll sell well in the starting and then it’ll drop like a pile of Rocks to the bottom.

Now the games aren’t too exciting as well, before discussing about the 3rd Party support, look at the games from Nintendo. I mean let’s be straight, for those not aware of Nintendo, Zelda despite of being one of the most popular games on Nintendo has never been a system seller. And then we have Splatoons2 coming out in the fall and the heavily anticipated Mario Odyssey coming out in holiday 2017. And where’s Pokémon Nintendo?
I mean showing three Nintendo games in a year and not an exciting 3rd party lineup it’s really scary.
And now coming to the 3rd Party support, Which needed to be on a mandatory basis for Nintendo to survive. I mean majority of the 3rd party games were tge ports of games which came out in last 5 years or so, like Skyrim, I am setsuna, and we heard so much from Ubisoft on the Switch in last few months, and what they launched? Rayman Origins?. Then came EA, and announced only Fifa, and that too a rumoured last gen Port. Seriously??? Only one game that too of the last Gen.
And then there were some good games also like Sonic Mania, new Shin Megami Tensai, Street Fighter 2 , Xenoblade 2 and a weird named but a promising looking game “Project Octapath Travel-ler”, which killed everything of that game, I mean no sense at all.

Then the Price factor, I mean I’m strictly against the gamers who choose graphics over game play, but still from the Hardware point of view, how can a device with a tablet powered GPU( I’m serious, a custom Nvidia Tegra chip), 720p screen and 32gb of internal memory with a docking station, which still doesn’t bring the switch anywhere near the Xbox ones and the PlayStation 4s, let alone the Xbox one S and the PS4 pro, which cost at $250 and you’ll get a bundled system for around $270. And let me make it clear, there is only one packaging of switch being sold, which is without any game @$300. Next come the Joy-con Controllers, selling at $50 each, and a combined bundle of two Joy-cons at $80. What a joke, Nintendo? Then the pro-controller at $70, I mean what is in that controller that it’s even Pricier than the dual Shock 4 and the Xbox one Controller.

It’s a no brainier to why Nintendo’s Stock went down by 6.2% within an hour after the presentation.And again I’m not saying that switch is going to fail or something, what I’m saying is that even on this crucial moment for Nintendo, they failed to deliver what the fans were looking forward to, and that being said I want myself to be proved wrong but that doesn’t look too promising.

Thanks for reading, what are your views on the Nintendo Switch?
Do comment!

PS: I’m opening a blog of my own in a few days on which I’ll be blogging about video games full on, and this Post will also be there as well. Do Check in A few days at http://www.kaffeinateddc.com (Yeah! I love drinking coffee and being “kaffeinated”, I’ll also be announcing on my Social Networking Profiles as well.
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